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The Five Extra Words

Following the massacre of grammar-school children in Newtown, Conn., in December 2012, high-powered weapons have been used to kill innocent victims in more senseless public incidents. Those killings, however, are only a fragment of the total harm caused by the misuse of firearms. Each year, more than 30,000 people die in the United States in firearm-related incidents. Many of those deaths involve handguns.

The adoption of rules that will lessen the number of those incidents should be a matter of primary concern to both federal and state legislators. Legislatures are in a far better position than judges to assess the wisdom of such rules and to evaluate the costs and benefits that rule changes can be expected to produce. It is those legislators, rather than federal judges, who should make the decisions that will determine what kinds of firearms should be available to private citizens, and when and how they may be used. Constitutional provisions that curtail the legislative power to govern in this area unquestionably do more harm than good.

3 thoughts on “The Five Extra Words”

If one reads the history of the BOR, one would know that the original wording of the 2nd Amendment in the first draft, was simply “The right of the People to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed”. The militia clause was added as an afterthought, because it was feared that the militia system might be abandoned over time.

Don’t you think a SCJ would know this? Of course he would, he was just being disingenuous.